Reflections, Reviews and News from the worlds of Opera and Classical Music

Friday, 8 February 2013

Yulianna Avdeeva (QEH); Joyce DiDonato's DramaQueens

First, the standard apologies for what, in this case, has
been an extremely long absence from the blogosphere. Various business, and
resultant busyness, has kept me away, including a trip to Milan. Anyway, back to London,
and to two concerts this week. First was a serious, impressive piano recital by the winner
of the 2010 Chopin Piano competition, Yulianna Avdeeva. It was a strong year at
the famous Warsaw
competition. Daniil Trifonov and Ingolf Wunder, both now with high-profile
record deals, were there, as was Evgeny Bozhanov, whose playing I greatly enjoyed at the RFH last year. She saw off them all, much to the chagrin of
parts of the Polish press, I gather.

Such a distinction might have helped her to fill more seats in the Queen
Elizabeth Hall than was the case on Tuesday. But that competition
is some time ago now, and the lack of Chopin
on the highly taxing but pleasing programme was therefore, I’d imagine,
significant; but her decision to start with Bach’s 34-minute-long French Overture BWV831 might not have drawn in the crowds. As it was,
though, she showed herself a forthright, convincing interpreter of Bach on the
piano, even if the overture sounded at times a little clompy—less her fault,
perhaps, than that of a piano that didn’t seem in tip-top condition. On the
whole, though, this was not Bach that sought consolation in pianistic beauty: it was not afraid to be percussive, driven and assertive. There was a fair bit of
pearly touch, and Avdeeva can pare her tone down beautifully when she wants,
but such effects were employed to provide telling contrast. The passage work
was light and delicate when required, too, while the ‘Echo’ was filled with
lots of lovely mini-delays.

Ravel’s Gaspard de la
nuit held no difficulties for her impressive technique—from the right of the auditorium, with her hands invisible, it was notable how still she remained even in
the most taxing passages—but was a little short on half-shades. Again, however,
just as soon I began to miss colouristic variety she tended to make a little adjustment one way or another, and the
hypnotic concentration of her ‘Le gibet’ was particularly impressive. After the
interval she effectively controlled the rhetorical excesses of Schumann’s remarkable
Op. 11 Sonata—stormy, forthright, architecturally persuasive and always impeccably musical.

Avdeeva makes her London concerto debut with the LPO and
Vladimir Jurowski next January, but it’s perhaps understandable that those she
beat in the Chopin Competition have overtaken her in winning a larger
following, and I idly wondered whether or not audiences have difficulty with so admirably
serious an approach coming from a 27-year-old female pianist. Would this
playing be perceived differently if it came from the hands of an
older male pianist? (Certainly the comments below this clip of her from the
competition—she won the Sonata Prize as well—suggest that gender does play a
role in the way some people perceive these things).

Perhaps worth pondering—and
Alice Sara Ott’s RFH recital next week will no doubt provide an interesting
contrast—but I certainly left Avdeeva’s recital wanting to hear her again as
soon as possible.

There was certainly no difficulty for Joyce DiDonato to rustle up a large and enthusiastic audience for her DramaQueens concert on Wednesday at the Barbican Hall. As part of a
large tour linked, in the now customary manner, to a CD release, the concert
featured a cleverly planned, often brilliantly executed programme, mixing, as
the list of composers included suggests, works well-known and obscure. There were arias by
Handel, Monteverdi and Hasse, as well as Antonio Cesti, Geminiano Giacomelli,
Giuseppe Maria Orlandini, Giovanni Porta; the brilliant Il Complesso Barocco
gave instrumental interludes in the form of pieces by Handel, Gluck and Vivaldi—in his ‘Per Pisendel’ Concerto, the leader Dmitry Sinkovsky came dangerously
close to upstaging La DiDonato and her extravagant Vivenne Westwood frocks.

There were some gems in the programme (Giacomelli’s ‘Sposa,
son disprezzata’ from Merope was one
in the first half, not least for the heartfelt performance), and DiDonato
managed to keep everything sounding fresh.

I wished, though, that she’d let the
voice loose a bit more. It was reined in a little, and there was something of a
thrill in ‘Brilla nell’alma’ from Handel’s Alessandro
when she let go on a couple of notes. Let’s hope there’s plenty of that too
when she and Juan Diego Flórez join forces for the Royal Opera’s La donna del lago later this season (they’ll also
be singing together as part of the Peruvian tenor’s Barbican residency in
April).

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About Me

I am Reviews Editor at Gramophone and a critic for the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times. I have previously been Deputy Editor at Opera magazine and opera critic of The Spectator. I have a background in musicology and my PhD (awarded from King's College London in early 2011) was a critical reassessment of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's 'Die Frau ohne Schatten'. My article 'Melancholy and Allegory in Die Frau ohne Schatten' can be found in the 'Cambridge Opera Journal', Vol. 24 No. 1 (March 2012), 67-97.

About this Blog

Fatal Conclusions is designed to serve as a modest outlet for various reviews (of varying levels of formality and punctuality) and ideas regarding what's going on in the Opera and Classical Music worlds--and, if I'm feeling adventurous, beyond. Thanks for popping by. I hope you enjoy reading and please feel free to leave comments.